1d10+1 minutes, which should have been rolled when you imbibed the potion. Did you make that roll before? If so, let me know what it was, and that's how many minutes you're transformed.
As the others play with ooze Wek, Princess examines the other potions to determine their function.
Princess, you confirm the contents of the blue and yellow vials with a quick sniff of each.
The blue potion is a potion of Quickstep. Each step you take has the Far tag for 1d10+1 minutes, allowing you to cross long distances extremely quickly. You still have complete control over where you step, but you can choose whether to step normally or step to a location a Far distance away.
The yellow potion is a Venom Touch potion. Your insides immediately burn for 2d6 poison damage that ignores armor, but any weapon you hold is granted the venomous tag for 2d10+10 minutes. Furthermore, your blood becomes a potent paralysis poison to anyone that drinks it for the same length of time. Blood bottled while under this effect will retain its poisonous qualities.
"Ooh, these are lovely little treats," Princess says, licking her lips excitedly. She looks down to where Uek and Lur are still dancing about.
"Come on, boys! Finish up your little spat and let's keep exploring this dungeon!"
Lur is temporarily out of the ooze's reach while hanging out on the partially-broken ladder. However, Uek is still hungry, and is beginning to climb up the ladder toward you. Ooze tendrils begin extending themselves out of the main mass, reaching up toward your boot and wrapping themselves around your ankle to pull you off your perch.
Give me a defy danger roll!
I need metal, and lots of it! Shattertooth jumps up. I need enough for a fine mesh across the ladder opening. Lur, come on up, we're going to filter the ooze!
Shattertooth takes any metal he can get his hands on and summons the Forgefires in his hands. Any metal he touches heats rapidly until he is able to form it like play-doh. He makes a simple mesh that will allow the ooze through, but prevent the coins. He then secures it to the ladder opening and trusts the Ooze's hunger to lead it through the impromptu filter.
You successfully form the mesh with the white-hot magic at your fingertips, Shattertooth, but Lur loses his grip on the ladder's rungs when Uek grabs hold of him!
Lur, you fall down through the air, but instead of a hard landing on the floor of the pit, you land on the squishy ooze of Uek's body. You're immersed in the gelatinous cube, take 1d6 damage that ignores armor. You are going to have an extremely difficult time moving, in fact it's nearly impossible to escape once it's got you - but if you don't try, you're at risk of being ripped apart by the ooze-druid's hunger. What do you do?
Shattertooth, you hold the mesh in your hands and look down to see that only Lur's hand is outside the ooze's body. What do you do?
Wek struggles to resolve his ooze-mind. Lur is without a home. Within this ooze body is not a home. Give him safe passage.
Wek's ooze body shudders mightily, but does not release Lur.
Princess...make a portal... comes his woozy voice.
Wek does not actually know if Princess can make portals. Through an ooze. To the level at the top of the ladder. Worth a thought-wave, though.
"A lovely thought dear, but beyond my capabilities!" She sighs as Lur plops down into Wek's oozy body. "Just wait it out!"
There's not much the ogre can do to help right now.
Realizing the situation, Lur begins a hack and slash method of exit from the Uek-ooze.
Shattertooth magically cools the grate and tosses it to Princess. Pull him up with this, then secure it over the hole!!
"Alright, I'll try." Princess reaches down with the grate to try to haul Lur up.
Vorgo jabs at the ooze with the ladder, trying to distract or overwhelm the digestive enzymes.
Princess, Vorgo and Shattertooth work together to try and keep Uek off of Lur, but there's only so much they can do from their elevated position. Uek closes in tightly around the barbarian and the digestive oozes begin to burn at the werebear's skin, but Lur summons up his rage and breaks free of the cube-druid's grip, breaking his upper body free of the oozes to grab hold of the ladder.
The grate is hanging down toward you via Princess's long grip, Lur! You grab hold of it, and haul yourself up on it as best you can.
Due to Princess' partial success and Vorgo's jostling of the ladder, the other ladder leg snaps loose of its housing on the central level! Now the only way up is by clinging on to the grate that Shattertooth constructed. Fortunately, you manage to grab hold of Princess' grate before the ladder takes you back down into Uek's embrace.
Lur, you're swinging by the grate that Princess is holding, and the others are holding the ogress from falling into the pit. Uek, as his final attempt to eat the barbarian before he escapes his grasp entirely, attempts to reach up and grab hold of the grate to pull it down, but isn't able to get a solid hold. You're hanging just out of his reach, Lur.
Uek only manages to pull off your left boot before you scramble up to the middle level in safety.
With no prey readily available now that Lur has escaped easy reach, Uek is able to slowly recover control of his own mind. As the druid nears the end of the potion's transformation period, and with Shattertooth's patient coaxing, he is able to filter out the coinage that he absorbed using Shattertooth's ingenious filtration screen, so that he doesn't suffer any ill effects from foreign bodies inside him when he reverts to lizard form.
All of the false coins have been slain, and are obviously different in appearance now that they are dead, making them easy to distinguish from the actual gold. After carefully counting them up as a group, you recover a significant sum of money: 2,520 gold in total. 100 gold coins is equal to 1 weight.
Wek oozes carefully through the screen that Shattertooth created, looking like so much clear noodles that re-form soon after they pass through the mesh.
"My apologies, Lur," says the lizardfolk, once he finally reverts to his red-scaled saurian form. "That potion was far beyond my control."
"Shattertooth. I wonder if we should melt these coins into something more transportable, or hide them for a return." . Wek rubs his jaw and crest thoughtfully, peering down at the pit that claimed his mind for four very troubling minutes.
"The idea of a hoard is somewhat appealing to me."
There is far too much here to carry. I can use the chest and the dead mimics into a secure door of sorts, but I recommend we take at least some of the coin. It could prove useful in or travels.
Shattertooth uses the wood and iron from the chest and the metal from the grate to make a heavily reinforced steel plug of sorts with no lock and melts the anchor points into the rock. If they ever came back they would need no lock. He would just unmake his creation.
Lur glares at Uek for a moment and then looks down pointedly to his bare foot. After a few seconds he wiggles his toes and then bursts into a deep hearty laughter.
Very well! After you take what you want to bring with you from the coinage room, Shattertooth seals it away, rendering it impassable to anyone passing by. It takes a few moments of concentration, what do the rest of you do during the meantime and how many coins do you each take?
Shattertooth takes 100 gold.
Vorgo takes 102 gold.
Lur doesn't take any.
Lur doesn't take any.
Princess gathers 100 gold coins and secrets them in various fat folds.
"All done here? No permanent damage to either of you, I hope?"
Once everybody is ready, she will lead the group back to the intersection of three passages down the other corridor.
While everyone is preparing, shattertooth climbs the later to see what's up there.
Vorgo watches Shattertooth go one way, Princess go the other way.
”Up the ladder, maybe?
"Very well." The ogre waits to see what Shattertooth will find.
Wek also scoops up 100 gold. "I earned as much, at least...
Wek wiggles his fingers as if to remember them for a moment, and then shifts back into a bat, flitting up the ladder-space to follow Shattertooth.
Climbing the ladder takes you through the real-looking but harmless blade traps that dissuade most from attempting the climb. Opening the trapdoor at the top of the ladder takes you into a small round chamber.
The trapdoor is in the center of the room's floor. There's a bed, an armoire, and a suit of armor on a rack. On the opposite side of the room is a table littered with alchemical ingredients (5 uses, 1 weight) and a traveler's alchemist kit.
Finally, your attention is drawn to a large, ragged wall-hanging. It looks as if it has been ripped to shreds, but Tiamat's stern draconic visage is still visible. It's been desecrated - apparently, the hanging's owner and the Black Dragonqueen are not on good terms. On hooks next to the tapestry are 4 birdcages. 3 are empty, and one has a faintly glowing light on the bottom.
Vorgo's eyes narrow. It takes a lot to get a reaction out of him, but this...this absolutely cannot stand.
Shattertooth advances carefully into the room. He notices the alchemy table for Princess, but moves toward the bird cages.
No, Vorgo, no illusions hang over this place except for the false blades on the ladder leading to it. Peering at the suit of armor suspiciously yields no new wisdom. The craftsmanship doesn't give away anything about who may have made it, and for what faction, but it looks as if it could fit almost any Medium-sized species, with the proper minor adjustment.
Shattertooth, you approach into the fourth birdcage and see that the faintly glowing light is emanating from the body of a fairy. It has the appearance of a young woman in her early twenties, with reddish hair, no bigger than the size of your thumb, and with iridescent wings that resemble the wings of a dragonfly. The fairy appears to be unconscious, and the light is weak.
Shattertooth is suspicious of fairies. They are generally tricksters and enjoy toying with gullible minotaurs, but this one doesn't seem to be faking it. He checks the other cages before attempting to wake her.
Wek hops over to the fairy-cage. Our enemy's enemy.
He gazes at the fairy with beady bat eyes.
...
Glancing in the other cages confirms that they are indeed empty. You try to open the fairy's cage only to find that it's been locked, the door to the birdcage won't open. There's a small keyhole built into the door, but no key is immediately visible.
You try shaking the cage, causing her to bump against the cage bars. It looks like she's breathing but she's still unconscious. Uek, you cling to the cage bars and peer inside, but her cage is empty other than its occupant.
It's too small for the fairy to squeeze through the bars herself, so it'd be difficult for a similarly-sized bat to get in as well. You could try, but you'd have to defy danger to avoid being stuck in some way.
We're using druid thought-speak using Animorphs rules, which means mental telepathy can be targeted or broadcast with friend or foe.
Before Wek tries any squeezing or transforming into something smaller that a fairy could skewer, like a fly, he attempts to wake up the fairy with telepathy.
Wake up. We can free you, but we need to know why you were imprisoned. I am 'Uek, a druid of the lizardfolk.
He does his best to make his message 'loud'.
The fairy stirs from her unconscious state at your prodding, her eyes slowly opening as she turns her head to look in your direction. She blinks slowly, trying to mouth out words, but her head soon slumps down again as she slips back into unconsciousness. Her light dims and flickers a little.